


The Market Angle

by BrandyFromTheBottle



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Billford - Freeform, Canon-Typical Violence, Christina Rossetti - Freeform, Drug Use, Dubious Consent, Eight-Ball - Freeform, Erotica, Gen if you squint, Gen if you want, Goblin Market, I mean the original poem was shippy as hell buuuuut, Incest, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Near Death, Purple Prose, Sibling Incest, Stancest - Freeform, WE MUSTN'T TRUST GOBLIN MEN, but it's also bill so, erotic book touching, how...do i tag this, i was told to tag that, just in case, kryptos - Freeform, look bill is really charming and ford is smitten alright, only the smuttiest literary allusions, pyronica - Freeform, this will probably make more sense if you read the poem, trust me that is a WARNING
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 01:20:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18955024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrandyFromTheBottle/pseuds/BrandyFromTheBottle
Summary: Ford is taken in with goblin men and Stanley tries to save him.





	The Market Angle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FocusOnScience](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FocusOnScience/gifts).



> A dear, dear friend reminded me that I ADORE Christina Rossetti's [Goblin Market](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44996/goblin-market). My filthy monkey paws took away the rest.

  
“Stanley, I see them!” Stanley grabs his brother and pulls him into the green and brown brush. In the dappled sunlight that can filter through the trees, Ford's face is a patchwork of impassioned pinks and sun-gold leafing, his eyes wide and bright behind his cocked glasses that he pushes up his large nose until they are righted. “Oh, Stanley, I saw them!”

“Well, cut it out. No good's gonna come outta consorting with those freaks.” Stanley crosses his arms once he's sure his brother isn't going to bolt like an eager puppy back after the retreating racket of the odd pack of monsters that strut through the forest of Gravity Falls.

“But, don't you hear them? They were talking about quantum theory! They must know things we could never hope to--Stanley!” Ford sighs dreamily, clutching his journal to his chest, absently fingering the gold foil of a six fingered hand emblazoned on the cover. The light glows around his fingers, as if he's trapped fireflies there. 

“Yeah, well, you know what happened to the last guy to go talking with ‘em.” Stanley swirls a finger at his temple, catching a falling curl as he mimics the turmoil of the wasted, manic mind of the brilliant inventor. “The guy can't barely talk. How are you gonna be some hotshot scientist if ya can't talk?” Ford pouts at the forest, at the dimming noise.

“I suppose…”

“Come on!” Stanley claps his brother on the shoulder, hand lingering against the worn-soft wool of the sweater vest Ford refuses to stop wearing, damn the increasing heat and humidity of summer. “We need to get back! Got dinner to burn and beer to wash it down with!” With that, Stanley turns, fingers dragging along and finally leaving his brother's surface, an astronaut leaving orbit. He hears Ford’s inelegant snort, but when he turns to retort, he hears a crashing and snapping of many feet and suddenly a rush of noise as the beasts from before clamor and cluck and cackle in the brush far closer to the brothers than they have ever been before. “Ford, let’s go!” Stan tries to shout, but it’s hoarse and smothered with fear into a quiet croak. Ford doesn’t seem to hear him; his eyes widen behind his glasses and his lips split open in a childish grin. “Ford!” Stanley reaches out for him, but Ford leans forward, like the needle of a compass.

“Just one look!” Ford says and he slips between the leaves and twigs; his journal flashes and his glasses wink good-bye. 

Stanley hesitates a moment, suspended before he snaps and runs.

Ford stumbles blindly into the clearing where the creatures gather around and chatter loudly, their words enticingly unintelligible.

“Well, hell-O, there!” A voice echoes and vibrates through the clearing and makes the air tremble against Ford’s ears. He shivers, skin prickling. “Well, well, WELL, what have we here? The left sock, half a pair?” The creatures chitter excitedly, the air sparks. There’s is a creature like a woman but a pillar of neon fire; there is a creature that is lumbering and jaw-jutting with a pool-ball for eyes. A rhombus stammers and wrings it’s hands while a set of wind up teeth  _ click-clack-clicks _ without the dampening of lips to quiet them. “Care to join us, Six-fingers?”

Ford shudders, he clutches his journal.

“For what?” He asks meekly, suddenly shy though he’s burning and buzzing with questions, fit to burst with buzzing as his eyes eat each new dazzling sight.

“A little talk,” the neon one coos.

“A little time,” slavers the one with the eight-ball-eyes.

“A deal,” the air thrums as a pyramid ignites the clearing with light; it twirls a cane and tilts a hat; it burns like radiation and Ford shields his eyes. Bright-dark spots sear and dazzle his eyes’ rods and cones; he blinks and shakes his head, bewildered.

“I, oh,” Ford hugs his journal in one arm as the other, trembling, reaches into one pocket, then the other. “I don’t have anything.” He admits, shame-faced but wanting. “Stanley carries the money; he picks my pocket if I try.” Something smooth and warm like leather caresses his cheek, his chin, and his head is tilted up. His eyes, still squinting and shy, meet the crooked squint of a large, yellow eye, like half a cat. It blinks, long lashes catching the air like dainty butterfly legs. Ford feels it smile at him; he knows the ecstasy of a flower in the first rays of dawn. He melts; he grins.

“Oh, Sixer,” the pyramid pulses light softly in rhythm to its words. “He picks so much more than POCKETS, your brother, huh?” The creatures chortle and Ford feels a blush like shame creep from one cheek to the other. “Don’t worry; no shame!” Another touch, a caress over Ford’s face smooths the wrinkles from his brow. “Get rid of that shadow your brother’s always HIDING in! It’s too BIG for him, anyway, don’t you think?” Ford feels lax with the words that lap over him in a cooling, vibrating contrast to the warm shock of the pyramid’s light. “Let’s CRACK that head open, huh? Let’s take a look. It’s so brilliant and bursting!” Ford feels his journal suddenly slip from his grasp; he doesn’t even protest as the pyramid holds it aloft in a third hand, a fourth hand trails slowly up the journal’s red spine and Ford feels the tingle along his. “Let’s LINGER and READ. What’s in the freak-genius’s book?” The journal cracks open and shines in the clearing the way it gleams in Ford’s mind; it stings his eyes and he beings to cry. He’s flying; he’s falling; held safe in numerous, tarry hands.

The creature reads from Ford’s journal. Each picture jumps from the page and shrieks or howls or giggles; they tumble and jump over the words that rush and run between them. The black hands are tender and reverent as they turn each shivering page.

“Oh, Sixer,” the pyramid breathes on Ford, warming and wetting him and wiping away the dew that gathers on his skin until he feels polished and new. He can taste the gentle perfume of turning pages and wet ink. “You’re WASTED here.” Ford trembles at the truth; he pants in the cloying heat of heady praise.

“More,” he croaks. The creature’s eye squints and turns.

“More?” It mimics, runs a finger deep down the books open spine; molten sparks jump between Ford’s vertebrae. “More what? Words from you? No.” Ford tries to bite his lip when his jaw falls slack; tries to keep his mouth shut to smother the moan that manifests in the air in Ford’s looping script. It reads: “more more more.” The moan slithers through the air and hisses until it settles on one slope of the pyramid. “Insatiable genius; I’ll slake you.” 

The pyramid--

“Bill,” it grins. 

Bill whispers into his ears, feels like a breeze and smells like metal; he whispers riddles and solutions and never the two together. Bill weaves between secrets and solutions thin praises that leave Ford parched and salivating; Ford is disgraced with sweat and drool as he clings to every utterance, every syllable. He grabs them from the air; he licks their echoes from his lips and paper crinkles in his fists. Bill makes Ford swell with words and numbers until he is a thin-skinned galaxy moaning into the dirt, chewing dust as he tries to remember the inconvenience of a human form. He rises like a marionette, still possessed as each pool of golden sunlight gives him pause to shudder and sigh. Ford staggers his way through the woods until he comes to the cabin in the woods; the affectionate home Stanley calls a shack.

Stanley waits for him there, wringing his hands and mouthing an empty bottle, nursing cold glass. Stanley leaps, bottle dropping dully to the grass like the aborted beat of a startled heart. Ford can not slow his brother; he cannot raise his clenched, curled red-knuckled fists to halt his brother before Stanley has engulfed him. His scent, his base, pure, human scent, chokes Ford until Stanley wraps blunt fingers into Ford’s slumping shoulders.

“You can’t,” Stanley starts. He throat is wet; he clears it. “Don’t run off!” He says sternly. “What’ll I do if you go crazy or somethin’, huh?” Stanley’s wetness rises into his eyes and lingers there. “Ya dumby.” 

“Oh, hush,” Ford shushes, he quiets his panting brother. “I’m fine, can’t you see? Or do you need to borrow my glasses?” Ford’s voice is hoarse but clear as he speaks; he can feel the vibration of his throat moving the air. 

“Coulda fooled me,” Stanley mutters, eyes falling sullenly to Ford’s balled fists. “Where’s your diary?” Stanley asks. Ford frowns and looks down; he looks down and sees only a single page in his hands.

“I must have left it,” he says. He sighs; he smiles. “I’ll get it tomorrow. Oh, Stanley.” Stanley grabs his arm and pulls-pushes-guides Ford into the shack. “Next time, don’t run away. You would love them, Stanley! Next time, stay.” Stanley doesn’t answer with words. He mumbles and grumbles and rumbles until Ford is in his bed and Stanley has curled around him. They mold together seamless; they meet and match like socks. Stanley holds Ford as Ford sighs and babbles and gushes. Stanley pets away Ford wet, sticky curls and combs them with his fingers when they begin to dry.

The sun rises; it raises the goat in the yard that chews on glass and bleats at grass. The goat bleats until Stanley rouses and glares and stares at the empty space that barely looks like Ford. Stanley stares and gapes and flies up and out of the shack; he runs to the edge of the yard and squints and pears until the gloom of the morning shadows begin to twitch and jeer. 

“I’m not afraid!” He shouts at the leering darkness. “Ford!” He shouts and he shouts and he shouts until his brother’s name is meaningless noises; until the goat has chewed a hole in his bare socks. 

He frets at the clearing’s edge, keeping the shack in sight, until he sees Ford emerge from the trees. He is scratched and bruised and dirtied; he is sagging and leaning in his skin.

“I missed them,” he mutters; Ford chews his lip and mutters to his hands. “They will be back tomorrow and they will have my journal.” Stanley worries and darts at the clearing’s edge until his fingers land in his brother’s soiled clothes.

“You idiot,” he whispers, he cajoles. Ford swats at him, as if Stanley is a fly that has landed on Ford’s soiled clothes.

“You’ll crinkle it,” Ford hisses and shoves Stanley away, pulling taunt the worn, creased page of the journal. Minute threads of old, pulped trees weep into the air to prance on the breeze and steal away. “There, you see, Stanley?” Ford tilts the pages and traces a crease like a lover chases a throbbing vein. “They wouldn’t leave this one piece behind. It’s too important. See, Stanley?” 

“Ya dumby,” Stanley cracks, he chokes and coughs. Ford frowns at him; his brows wrinkle and furrow, ripe for bitterness and doubt.

Stanley takes Ford to bed, each night he soothes his feverish brother as he burns with ideas that writhe within the confines of his skull. Stanley shushes his brother’s hot, muttering whispers against his neck and hair; hates each searing sigh as Ford loses heat and spark and fight. Ford fades and sinks and deflates. Stanley hugs him tight as he can, tucks him in as well he can, but he wakes cold. Cold and alone until he wakes just cold.

“Ford?” Stanley croaks; he cries. He clutches at his brother and sobs until Ford trembles back. He is faded and frail; he clutches a journal page like a tissue. Stanley holds his breath until he can hear the thready, steady whistle of Ford’s thin whines. Stanley coughs, laughs. He glares at the shadow of Death in the cobweb-corners of the shack; he glares out the window at the shadows in the forest. “Ford? I’ll be back, okay? Just...just don’t be stupid, okay?” Stanley clutches his brother; he kisses Ford’s dry brow and sunken eyes. “Please, ya dumby.”

Stanley carefully pries the butter-soft paper from Ford’s grasp; Ford barely stirs but to whimper and rend Stanley’s heart with the quiet sound. Stanley kisses another dry, trembling kiss to his brother’s hair and slips from the room with a final glare at the shadows.

The trees huddle close and bow together to blacken the path Stanley tries to take; he can only listen to the clamor and chatter of freaks and monsters; he can only track their noise until it is so loud that his very bones shake and quake. He joints grind together and creak as the ground rumbles and the air tenses into a dense cloud.

“Well, well, WELL,” a voice makes the branches of the tree knock together; it makes the blackness of the shadows flash bright and white like the heart of a burning log. “What have we here? The right sock? Half of a pair?”

“Shut up!” Stanley screws his eyes shut and curls his fingers tight, tight around the paper in his hands. It creaks; the trees creak; the thing laughs in peeling creaks. “Gimmie Ford’s journal.” He says. “Whatever you want; whatever it is. Whatever you got from him. I got it, too, see? We’re twins.” The thing laughs and Stanley keeps his eyes shut, but his closed lids burn hot and red.

“From you? Let’s see, big guy. No brains, no future.” The air hums like someone’s turned in a generator. Stanley can feel the hairs on his arms raise; he can taste ozone. 

“If there’s no deal, I’m leaving,” Stanley grits, feels the jar of the words on his teeth. The air trembles and heats and Stanley can’t breathe. Something touches his face, his shoulders, his ribs. 

“Come on, big guy!” The things are warm and supple; they weave around him and tickle. “I’ll take it off you! The SHADOW,” the air freezes; Stanley chokes. “Gimmie that; NASTY shadow. I’ll give you what I gave dear Fordsy.” The air gets thick; it becomes physical and hot. It burns; Stanley can smell the forest burning but he keeps his eyes shut. “Come ON!” The soft, tender things around him grow and thin and grow and wind and squeeze. Stanley gasps; his fingers spasm around the thin journal’s page. “You’re just ONE UGLY SOCK,” the thing shakes the air, splits the air. It shrieks a voice like lightning. “ONE UGLY SOCK! You’re not that stupid!” Stanley is shaken; his neck snaps and his brain rattles into his head. His brain smacks  _ one-two-one _ against the chalk of his skull and Stanley fades; he smudges on the world and burns black at the edges.

“Ford,” Stanley croaks; he wheezes. He can taste heat and meat; he tastes his own body burning. 

“Ford!” It shrieks and shakes. Shrieking and shaking: “Dumbest idiot! Hot house plant! He blooms once with pretty words and withers with the rest!” Stanley shakes his head; he hisses. “Quiet, shadow! Thoughtless sock-puppet!” 

“Journal!” Stanley’s voice is hoarse and thin; cracking in the heat. “Ford!”

“Idiot!” It screams, it flings Stanley down and stomps on him and beats him with its cane. Beats him until Stanley is black at the ink that stains the page in Stanley’s clenched fist. Beats him until Stanley only breathes and thinks of breathing as the creature raves above him. A weight slams into Stanley that has him stuttering out of existence; out of time. He stops, the way water stops when frozen and becomes ice. Stanley freezes and after the creature has tried to burn him away, it ceases and the world stills and quiets. 

The world is gray, like drier lint and twilight and smudges of ink and hand against well-worn pages. Stanley rises in a gray world and only knows to go home; he feels a pulls like a compass and he stumbles of roots that trip him and thorns and twigs that grab him. He leaves piece after piece of himself behind in fabric scrap and shed blood and skin until he stumbles to the shack.

He stumbles; he trips; he falls. He crawls lower than the goat; like a slug; to the door. He slithers and scrapes and drags his way to the bed. Ford lays there, glassy-eyed and vague. 

“Ford,” Stanley tries, he cries. He throat is swollen and sore. “Ford, please, I don’t have your journal. He--Ford, please.” Stanley cries, he crawls into the bed, stains the sheets with dirt and blood. “Ford, you--you beautiful genius,” Stanley sobs, raises a shaking hand to his brother’s cool head. 

“...Stanley?” a rasping voice creaks out of Ford’s mouth. Stanley stutters and then flurries.

“Ford!?” He rushes fingers over his brother’s face; he traces each line he knows by heart and touch. “Ford!?”

“Did you…” Ford wheezes and squeezes his eyes shut; tears start to gather and wet his dry lashes. “What did you do?”

“...I...I didn't get your journal,” Stanley admits, it spills like ash from his mouth and stains the bed.

“S..Stanley…”

“Come on, come on, ya fucking genius. Beautiful--”

“Stop--” Ford whines and raises a clammy hand to grasp Stanley’s. “Stop, it sounds…”

“What?” Stanley squeezes back, grasping and pleading with his eyes, his mouth, his hands. 

“Just call me a dumby,” Ford smiles like a crack in stone, like he’ll break. Stanley hurries to put a hand over the wrinkle of a grin, to hold Ford’s face together.

“Moron,” Stanley agrees; coos; sings. “Beautiful dumbass.”

“That’s--Stanley, that’s--”

“Pain in my ass,” Stanley leaks out words like tears and snot. Ford grimaces and groans.

“Stop, you’re--”

“Ya dumby,” Stanley grabs his brother and clings to him; wills his feverish heat into Ford’s slowly quickening limbs. “You absolute--I love you.”

“Get off,” Ford protests weakly, pushing at Stanley with all the heat and strength of a kneading kitten. 

“Dumby,” Stanley sighs and falls, safe in Ford’s arms.

**Author's Note:**

> “For there is no friend like a sister  
> In calm or stormy weather;  
> To cheer one on the tedious way,  
> To fetch one if one goes astray,  
> To lift one if one totters down,  
> To strengthen whilst one stands.”


End file.
